


For You, I Would Do It a Thousand Times

by WoolyLambda



Series: Merriwynn Mahariel [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, get ready for that, this fic has Tamlen Sads in it so like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 00:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12829671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WoolyLambda/pseuds/WoolyLambda
Summary: Mahariel ruminates after the encounter with the tormented shriek. Alistair has bad timing.





	For You, I Would Do It a Thousand Times

You don’t usually assume you’ll have to bury the man you love more than once. When a person is gone, they’re gone for good. Unless by some terrible trick of necromancy, you accept the fact that your friend, lover, or partner will never return from the earth in which they are buried, and you can move on. You go on living, so that you can give them a legacy to be proud of. You go on living, so that you can save other people’s friends, lovers, and partners from the fate that befell your own. You go on living, because you do not want to be the friend, lover, or partner who is now in the dirt, too.

But, somehow, by some twist of fate, I have buried Tamlen twice. I have watched him die twice. He has been taken away from me twice. I am still here, somehow, though at this point I am not entirely sure why. If not dead twice, then why not dead three times? He could burst forth from the newly turned ground at any moment, this time without his skin, to go with the missing hair and voice. I could bury him again forty times, and still not be done with it.

So, why go on living? If my friend-lover-partner could come back to life for a second time, or any number of times thereafter, why keep marching along on the path of mortality?

I like to think it’s because I have things that I care about. People who I want to see survive this terrible Blight, but who I know would probably drop dead the minute I stopped micro-managing them. People who, without me, would have been killed by the darkspawn horde back when it first took Lothering. When it first took the Wilds. When it first took Ostagar. When it first blighted my camp.

In reality, it’s because I have a terrible, disgusting sort of hope that it will happen again. He’ll wake up again, and I’ll get to look in to those blue eyes one last time before cutting his throat and laying him to rest for the third time. It will become routine and boring for the two of us, him falling apart more and more each time, and me returning him to the earth, until it’s just those eyes in the sockets of a bleached white skull, and again after that until he’s turned to dust.

The thought that this terrible fate might befall him again is what’s keeping me from drowning myself while I wash his blood out of my hair. While I scrub myself clean with the last of the soap he used to make for me, trying my best to remember this scent of his, instead of the rank odour of taint and decay that accompanied him this evening. It’s a bar of the loveliest soap I’ve ever had the pleasure of smelling. Tiny elfroot buds dot the surface of the bar, leaving the blossoms lingering in my hair as I clean. I used to think that he must have put them in the soap on purpose, so he could pull them out of my hair when I was dry. An excuse to touch me in front of our clanmates in a way that wasn’t seen as improper or untoward for a couple not yet betrothed.

Now, it feels like they’re tiny pieces of him. Where petals cling to my neck and back as I lather my shoulders, I imagine his fingertips, trailing down my spine to make me shiver whenever I got close. I imagine his lips, leaving chaste kisses in the hollow of my jaw, on my eyelids, on the tip of my nose. I imagine him here, washing my back with those strong, calloused hands of his, and making me melt with them. I imagine him anywhere but deep in the grave that I had to dig for him.

I dip my head under the surface, briefly contemplating the logistics of going through with drowning before my will to live resurfaces, me along with it.

“Maker’s breath!” I hear a cry from the bank, and whip my hands over my breasts before dropping like a rock into the dark water. I’m up to my chin in the foam before I fix my gaze on my would-be assailant.

“Now’s not a good time, Alistair,” I bite out, raising one hand out of the water to wave the bar of soap at him.

He looks at it, and then back down to my face before a look of intense embarrassment flushes his cheeks, and a hand flies up to cover his eyes.

“I just thought you might want someone to talk to, after all of that,” he says from behind the shield of his hand.

“Yes, well,” I deadpan, “if you would allow me to clothe myself before we have this chat?”

He mumbles out an apology, and returns to the bushes from whence he came. I can hear that he’s stayed close enough for his shifting weight on the leaves to make an audible crunch, so there’s no getting out of this heart-to-heart unless I want to swim for it.

I get out of the water as quietly as I can, and rub myself dry with a small square of cloth. Looking at it now, I remember that, when I first stitched it, the cloth had been meant for Tamlen. He was always losing his handkerchiefs, and I’d thought it might make a nice token for him when we had a moment to ourselves.

Just another thing to cry over some other night, when I’m not camped in the woods with the people who helped me to murder him.

My underthings are on, with my pants halfway up my legs when Alistair calls back to ask if I’ve finished dressing. I resist the urge to snap at him with the skill and grace of the Divine herself, quickly tying my pants, and throwing my shirt over my head before beckoning him back to the bank of the river with a shout.

“So sorry,” he says, eyes flicking between my face and my now-covered breasts as though for emphasis. The look that I give him for this brings about another flush, and his eyes go wide at the realization of what he’s just done. I stop him in his tracks before he can speak.

“Don’t apologize again.”

He nods, lips pursed tightly, and eyes looking straight into my own. They move out over the water after a moment, when he drops down to sit in the grass, and he fixes his gaze there to stop himself from looking at me entirely. There’s a long, thoughtful pause before he speaks.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “You…. It looks like you’ve been crying.” He takes a quick look at my face to ensure he saw the puffiness of my eyes correctly, and pats the ground next to him, flattening the grass to make a suitable seat for me. I oblige him, dropping to sit as well, so that now both of us look like fools while we stare into a river.

“I don’t think I’ve been okay for a while now,” I reply.

“Well, that’s a bit morbid, don’t you think?” Alistair tuts, picking up a small stick and throwing in into the water. We both watch as it floats away, bobbing down the river and dipping below the water before resurfacing and getting stuck on a rock.

“I was so ready,” I say, running my hands up and down my arms to fend off the evening chill.

“Hm?” He flicks his gaze back up to me, and at the lack of a glare, it lingers.

“I was so ready to move on from him,” I murmur, “and now I am back in that ruin, with his hand on the surface of that damn mirror, and my heart in my throat.”

“Just focus on me, then,” Alistair whispers, leaning in to press our side together.

I freeze, eyes wide as he moves to put an arm around me.

“Is this alright?” he asks.

Nodding, I try my best to keep a straight face, but it’s not long before my mask cracks and I’m weeping into his neck, leaving a wet patch in the fabric of his shirt. He shushes and rubs at my back, petting my hair when the sobs that wrack through me start to die down.

We sit there like that for a while. I can see a mist coming into his own eyes, but I elect not to point it out.

“That rose you gave me…” I start, feeling him jump a bit at the sudden speech, “was it really from Lothering? It couldn’t have lasted in your pack all this time, if it was.”

“Funnily enough, I picked it just before we left, and we got to the Circle Tower in such short order that it hadn’t even had time to wilt. I had Wynne preserve it for me after our round in the Fade,” Alistair replies. I can feel the words reverberating in his chest as it rises and falls, deep breaths drawn in and out as slowly as he can take them so as to avoid jostling me.

“Did you, actually?” I ask, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the sleeves of my nightshirt.

“Why would I lie about that sort of thing?” he shoots back. A small smile turns the corners of my mouth as I return my head to it’s nestling spot on Alistair’s shoulder.

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to corroborate the story with our good healer, then.”

He snickers at this, and tightens his hold around me briefly before letting go entirely to stand.

“We should probably get back to camp before anyone gets the wrong idea, huh?” Alistair asks, offering a hand to help me up.

I nod, taking his hand in mine, and allowing him to pull me up into an embrace before we return to the clearing.

**Author's Note:**

> this is my second time writing DA fic, but my first time writing Origins so pls be gentle


End file.
